In recent years, a trend towards electronic trading has become well-established, causing one major exchange after another to replace or at least supplement the traditional open outcry, where a trade is done face to face, with electronic systems which automatically match bids and offers. While the motivation behind using electronic trading may vary from market to market, greater efficiency and volume are some of the considerations.
In particular, subscribing traders are connected to an exchange's electronic trading platform by way of a communication link and through an application program interface to facilitate real-time electronic messaging between themselves and the exchange. The electronic messaging includes market information that is sent from the electronic market to the traders. Market information may include data that represents just the inside market. The inside market is the lowest sell price (best ask) and the highest buy price (best bid) at a particular point in time. Market information may also include market depth. Market depth refers to quantities available at the inside market and can also refer to quantities available at other prices away from the inside market. The quantity available at a given price level is usually provided by the host exchange in aggregate sums. In other words, a host exchange usually provides the total buy or the total sell quantity available in the market at a particular price level in its data feed. The extent of the market depth available to a trader usually depends on the host exchange. For instance, some host exchanges provide market depth for all or many price levels, while some provide only quantities associated with the inside market, and others may provide no market depth at all. Additionally, the host exchange can offer other types of market information such as the last traded price (“LTP”), or the last traded quantity (“LTQ”).
Just as with an open-outcry exchange, an electronic exchange can list any number of tradeable objects. Traders may choose to trade one tradeable object or more than one tradeable object, and they may simultaneously trade tradeable objects that are listed at more than one exchange. Ordinarily, each tradeable object has its own separate stream of market information. Therefore, in these instances, the traders will generally receive more than one stream of market information such that each stream of market information attempts to characterize a given tradeable object.
As used herein, the term “tradeable object” refers to anything that can be traded with a quantity and price. For example, tradeable objects may include, but are not limited to, all types of traded financial products, such as, for example, stocks, options, bonds, futures, currency, and warrants, as well as funds, derivatives, and collections of the foregoing. Moreover, tradeable objects may include all types of commodities, such as grains, energy, and metals. Also, a tradeable object may be “real,” such as products that are listed by an exchange for trading, or “synthetic,” such as a combination of real products that is created by the trader. A tradeable object could also be a combination of other tradeable objects, such as a class of tradeable objects.
Once the traders receive market information corresponding to a tradeable object, the market information may be displayed to them via their trading screens. Upon viewing the information, traders take certain actions including the actions of sending buy or sell orders to the electronic market, adjusting existing orders, deleting orders, or otherwise managing orders and risk.
A commercially available trading screen that allows a trader to trade in an electronic environment is X_TRADER® from Trading Technologies International, Inc. of Chicago, Ill. X_TRADER® also provides an electronic trading interface, referred to as MD Trader™. Portions of the X_TRADER® and the MD Trader™-style display are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,772,132 entitled “Click Based Trading with Intuitive Grid Display of Market Depth,” filed on Jun. 9, 2000, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/971,087, entitled “Click Based Trading With Intuitive Grid Display of Market Depth and Price Consolidation,” filed on Oct. 5, 2001, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/125,894, entitled “Trading Tools For Electronic Trading,” filed on Apr. 19, 2002, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/376,417, entitled “A System and Method for Trading and Displaying Market Information in an Electronic Trading Environment,” filed on Feb. 28, 2003, the contents of each are incorporated herein by reference.
Using a trading screen a trader can set order parameters before sending the order to an electronic exchange. Specifically, a trader could open an order ticket before placing an order. Within an order ticket the trader can manually set, among other parameters, the desired price and the desired quantity. The trader must then select a send button to submit the order to the electronic exchange with the defined parameters associated with it. Another common method of manually setting order parameters is to use a single action method of entering order parameters, where the trader defines a default quantity and using a mouse the trader selects the price level at which to place an order. When the order is submitted it has the trader-defined default quantity associated with it.
There are a number of risk management formulas available to assist traders in managing risk. Conventionally, the traders utilize the risk management formulas and then manually calculate a result that can help a trader determine how they should trade to maximize profits and minimize risk. These variables may be based on, among other things, risk parameters or market conditions.
Some traders feel that the quantity associated with an order is somewhat arbitrary in that it does not matter what the quantity is, but simply that the market moves in the direction trader's of the submitted order. However, the decision regarding how much quantity to associate with a given order can be as important as the decision of what price level at which to place the order. While a trading system may assist the trader in what to trade, when to trade, and at what price to trade, it is just as important for a trading system to aid the trader in determining how much quantity to trade in order to maximize profits and minimize risk.
There continues to be a need for a risk management tool that will allow traders to more accurately manage risk when placing orders through an order entry trading screen in an electronic trading environment.